Bangla Desh 9/29/2010

Bangla Desh - NOT a basket case (!) ...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575519330896471058.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Things can and do improve ... get much better

Here is an interesting perspective ... (Letters in the WSJ, Oct 3, 2010)

Sadanand Dhume's "Bangladesh, 'Basket Case' No More" (op-ed, Sept. 29) contrasts outcomes in Pakistan and its erstwhile former eastern province, and offers lessons not just for Pakistan but for all Muslim-majority countries. Of those, perhaps the most telling example is Bangladesh's return to its secular origins. However, Mr. Dhume leaves out another striking distinction: the amount of U.S. aid for each country in the post-9/11 era. At nearly $18 billion, U.S. aid (economic and military) to Pakistan dwarfs Bangladesh's $0.5 billion for the same period with starkly divergent results, both for the U.S. and the respective countries.

Vijay Dandapani

New York

Technology Innovation Report

http://online.wsj.com/public/page/technology-innovation-awards-09272010.html

The best remains out there, in the future ... Hang on, it is coming our way - (in reality we create the future and run towards it!)

New Eye Glasses?

No more trifocals?

New ideas in lenses - improving how we can see!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703470904575500351415391326.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Inspiration point - ideas create ideas - grow

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989304575503730101860838.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

What the summary says
"Big new ideas more often result from recycling and combining old ideas than from eureka moments. Consider the origins of some familiar innovations"

(Sounds like Matt Ridley discovered - Ideas generating ideas!)

How prosperity evolves, iPad

Elizabeth Powers writing in The Weekly Standard, Sept. 27, 2010 (as published in the WSJ, September 27, 2010)

The processor of my husband's iPad . . . is designed by Apple in Cupertino, California, and manufactured by South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. Another South Korea-based company, LG Display and Japan's Seiko Epson Corp. make the LCD display while Taiwan-based Wintek Corp. makes the glass overlay necessary to detect touches of users' fingertips. . . . For the amazing integration of production and markets to work and bring an iPad to your local retailer, all a country needs are the legal protection of property rights (including intellectual property or shares in a corporation), the outlawing of monopoly protection, a good internal transportation and communication system, secure labor, supplies, and customers. Not to put too fine a point on it, is it any wonder that there is probably not a single component of any high tech product owned by readers of this review that was made in South America or (excluding Israel) the Middle East?

In "The world is flat", Thomas Friedman describes the assembly of a laptop with parts from all over the world.

Counter Intuitives

The more of something we use, the less scarce it will become (so sayeth Julian Simon through several examples) ...

Even as gasoline consumption increases, we have seen increased availability of gasoline, the prices have in general decreased over time - our purchasing power has increased. Why? Because with impending scarcity, humans adapt/innovate - we get better at searching/producing - improving.

So, if more of us started driving SUV's and consuming more gas, would that be a good thing? Yes, in short. Those that can afford such, when they consume more, it will stimulate more economic activity - in production, search, transportation and so on ... the issue with increase in CO2 is ofcourse something that we have been asked to consider - there are some that believe that CO2 is as deadly as the worst, dangerous gases created by chemical processing - and that's simply not true. I will write about that separately.

Imagine the PC in 1984 - and where we are today (2010) - even as more and more people have PC's (OK, Mac's also!) the price per (CPU/RAM/hard drive space/videos/...) has gone down steadily ... People buying PC's sent the signal that more can be sold - and people came up with better ideas for better PC's - Moore's Law took over - We have not seen the end in sight (yes, we have heard about the limits of production of chips - as the feature sizes shrink, it gets more and more expensive to make the microprocessors - yet, the price of a final assembled PC keeps falling - because we are getting more bang for the same buck - Is there a limit? I do not know - have not read about any limit - When we are unable to shrink features on silicon, we may discover newer materials OR other techniques to speed up the processor - just recently there were reports of quantum computing - when implemented, it will make today's Super Fast Computers/Crays look like the 1984 PC's ... so, no, I do not see limits to where we are headed ...